22 ( ...... 1 -.-ILJ .=-.::, CÁtTh. J) ((T here's not much use our making' too definite plans tor the future, Joe. Who knows? Tiffany's may not even be in business when we get out." . a Mitchell squadron and the whole squadron was supposed to be on its way together, but two of the Mitchells had crashed and burned on the takeoff at Natal as Whitejack's plane had circled the field, "\vaiting to form up. The rest of the squadron had been held at Natal and Whitejack's plane had been sent on to Accra, across the ocean, hy itself. Vaguely and slowly, lying on the warm cot, with the wild song of the Negro boy outside the window, Stais thought of the two Mitchells burning hetween sea and jungle three thousand miles away, and of other planes burning elsewhere, and of what it was going to be like sitting down in the armchair of his own house and looking across the room at his t mother-, and of the pretty Viennese girl in Jerusalem, and of the DC-3 coming down slowly, like an angel in the dusk, to the rough, secret pasture in the Peloponnesian hills. He fell asleep. His bones knit gently into dreams on the soft cot, with the sheets, in the quiet barracks, and he was over Athens again, with the ruins pale and shining on the hills, and the fighters . boring in, and Lathrop saying, over the intercom, as they persisted into a hun- dred, fifty yards, twisting, swift and shifty, in the bright Greek sky, "They grounded all the students today. They have the instructors up this afternoon." And, suddenly and wildly, fifty feet over Ploe ti, with Liberators going down in to the filth in dozens, flam- ing . . . Then swimming off the white beach at Benghasi, with the dead boys playing in the mild, tideless swell, then the parachute pulling at every mus- cle in his body, then the green and forest blue of Minnesota woods and his father, fat and small, sleeping on pine needles on his Sunday off, then Ath- ens again, Athens. . . " I D,ON'T know what's come over o " 0 the lIeutenant, a ne'VJïr VOIce was saying as Stais came out of his dream. "He passes us on the field and he just d ' " on t seem to see us. Stais opened his eyes. Novak, :1 farm hoy from Oklahoma, was sitting on the edge of Whitejack's bed, talking. "It has all the guys real worried." He had a high, shy, rather girlish voice. "I used to think they never carne better JULY 2. 2., 1 9 4- 4- than the lieutenant. Now-" Novak shrugged. "If he does see you, he snaps at you like he was General Ulysses S. Grant. " "Maybe," Whitejack said, "maybe seeing Lieutenant Brogan go down in Natal. . . He and Brogan were friends since they were ten years old. Like as if I saw] ohnny Moffat go down." "It's not that." Novak went over to his own cot and got out his writing pad. "It began back in Miami, four week" ago. Didn't you notice it?" "I noticed it," White jack said slowly. "You ough t to ask him a bou tit." Novak started writing a letter. "You and him are good friends. After all, go- ing into combat now, it's bad-the lieu- tenant just lookin' through us when he passes us on the field. You don't think he's drunk all the time, do you?" "He's not drunk." "You ought to ask him." "Maybe I will." Whitejack sat up. "Maybe I will." He looked forlornly down at his stomach. "Since I got into the Army, I've turned pig-fat. On the day I took the oath, I was twenty-eight and one-half inches around the waist. Today I'm thirty-two and three-quar- ters if I'm an inch. The Army... Maybe I shouldn't've joined. I was in a reserved profession, and I was the sole support of an ailing mother." "Why did you join?" Stais asked. "Oh." White jack smiled at him. "You're awake. Feeling any better, Sergeant?" "Feeling fine, thanks. Why did you . 0 "I " JOIn r "Well-" White jack ruhbed the side of his jaw . "Well, I waited and I wait- ed. I sat up in my cahin in the hills and I tried to avoid listenin' to the radio, and I waited and I waited, and finally 1 went downtown to my mother and I said, 'Ma'am, I just can't wait any long- , dI .. d " er, an JOlne up. "When was that?" Stais asked. "Eight days"-Whitejack lay down again, plumping the pillow under his head-"eight days after Pearl Harbor." "Sergeant," Novak said, "Sergeant Stais, you don't mind if I tell my girl you're a Greek, do you?" " N " s o O d I " I d ' 0, talS sal grave y. on t rnind. You know, I was born in Min- nesota. " "I know," said Novak, writing in- dustriously. "But your parents came from Greece. My girl'll be very inter- ested, your parents coming from Greece and you bombing Greece and being shot down there." "What do you mean, your girl?" Whitejack asked. "1 thought you said ..